PICK YOUR OWN

In pick your own schemes producers open farms or fields for customers to pick their own produce, typically but not always filling baskets or tubs and paying on the basis of units or weight. Pick your own farms have historically been widely used in soft fruit, especially strawberries, raspberries and currants, squash/pumpkins and Christmas trees, but can be adapted to a much wider range of produce. There are examples of ‘self harvest’ CSAs where, with support and guidance from the growers, customers harvest their entire veg share.

Pick your own schemes bring people to the farm, creating opportunities for further up-selling and cross-selling, and work well alongside a box scheme or CSA collection, a farm shop or café. However, they have also worked as stand alone attractions and people are often willing to travel to a PYO as a fun family day out.

A great advantage for producers of pick your own schemes is that the cost of harvesting, packing and delivering produce is largely removed, and many people, when picking for themselves, are less fussy about quality and may well choose produce growers would otherwise grade out. However, in doing so producers give up control over harvesting quality and risk greater damage to plants. Demand can also be hard to gauge, and so back up plans for processing unpicked fruit could be worth considering. The website www.pyo.co.uk provides a search function of pick your own farms that may be of use to farmers thinking of setting up a pick your own scheme.

Advantages

 * Producers receive near to retail prices.
 * Harvesting, packaging and delivery costs are removed.
 * Brings people to the farm and creates opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling.
 * Low infrastructure requirements.

Disadvantages

 * May be harder to predict demand and ensure full crop is sold.
 * Location dependant.